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battles

Scala, Kings Cross, London [UK]

16/05/07

Nice evening at the Scala, quite interesting line up featuring Four Tet dj-set introducing both the almost unknown Clark and Battles.
The man entertains us, pushing weird sounds at a very soft volume.

Clark duo seem not to be completely self-confident: a drummer and a guy using a couple of Akai MPC2500 samplers push nice beats and breaks but never totally convincing the audience, maybe they do it on cd.

While mr. Four Tet starts pushing a little bit more on the bass, Battles themselves set their stations: drumkit on the front line and wall of amps!

Being one of the lucky to have seen both helmet and don caballero, I' m always been amused by the idea of a kind of superband joining helmet rigid maths, almost industrial drumming and riffing, with don caballero psychedelic, self-indulgent guitar picking and tapping.
So, the mix works, and some spice is definitely added by the "vocals" of Tyondai Braxton, who beat-boxes and yodels around some of the tracks

For a good hour sounds run after each others, thanks to the notable work of Ian William (former Don Caballero and Strorm And Stress) and Dave Konopka, who often samples his bass/guitar to build with the primitiv drumming of John Stainer a backbone for noise deviations of the others
…which don' t take long to come: the two often play both guitar and keyboard at the same time (congratulations!).
The wall of sound slowly and unexpected find sense and entangles the audience, free to dance to something both primitive and very refined.

Atlas, probably their most known track, is performed close to the end of the gig; in the delirium even Battles themselves slide completely out of tune, but with self-confidence gain the control back.